


telephone wires (sizzling like a snare)

by snitches_get_stitches



Series: goner [1]
Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Analysis, Anxiety, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 15:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snitches_get_stitches/pseuds/snitches_get_stitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh is not weak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	telephone wires (sizzling like a snare)

**Author's Note:**

> ok, so this kinda came up after thinking on josh and tyler's dynamic in the band together, and how tyler is the one that openly talks about his struggles with anxiety and depression and the like and is generally the one that garners the most sym/empathy from fans. meanwhile, josh is sort of, like, the backbone of the band, the rock. and he hardly talks ever about struggling with these kinds of issues, but i distinctly remember him mentioning on twitter once how thoughts of suicide of struck him once or twice in the past but it's never really something he's addressed in the band in relation to himself. so idk, i just kinda got thinking on their individual roles in the band and how they handle their respective problems and ended up writing this. hope you like. <3
> 
> disclaimer/copyright/whatever: fictional representations of real people. josh and tyler own themselves, obviously.

Tyler is fragile.

Tyler is fragile because of the tiny, silver-white scars that scatter up his thighs, healed over but never gone. He is fragile because of the four bottles of anti-depressants and anxiety medication that are kept in the bus bathroom cupboard, because of the pill organizer on the breakfast table that he keeps them in. He is fragile because every night he puts his fingers to his head and pretends to pull the trigger, fragile because every night he needs to. He is fragile because of the marks his fingernails left on the bottom of Josh's bunk, and fragile because of the nightmares that caused them. 

Tyler is all small wrists and watery eyes and bruised shoulder blades.

Tyler is fragile.

Josh is not.

Josh is strong. Josh is strong because he cleans up his own messes and doesn't go to therapy. He is strong because he works out now and can take care of bullies, strong because now he doesn't have any. He is strong because he can sleep eight hours a night, and strong because it's easy for him. Josh is strong because when Tyler cries on his shoulder, Josh doesn't cry with him.

Josh is not weak.

Josh is not weak, because he does not talk about his problems, and Josh has never needed to. Josh does not think about killing himself.

Most of the time.

Josh doesn't talk about the times when he has. Josh doesn't talk about how when he was thirteen, he climbed to the top of his friend's apartment building through the fire escape and thought about jumping. Josh doesn't talk about how he almost did.

Josh doesn't talk about how he cried after his parents yelled at him for getting his ears gauged. He doesn't talk about how he got his lip pierced the day after, and he definitely doesn't talk about how the chemicals from the first time he dyed his hair made him throw up. He doesn't talk about how his dad almost hit him and took all his CDs away and forbid him from drumming for weeks.

Josh is not weak, because now he can hold Tyler and listen to him cry and understand. Josh is not weak, because he wasn't always able to.

Josh is not weak. And that's all anyone needs to know.

 


End file.
